Panel Urges Shift of Focus For School Science Courses

Published: December 7, 1995

Rather than memorizing the nomenclature of plant families, the anatomy of a frog or the periodic table, long staples of school science courses, students should learn to investigate and question the workings of the natural world, a national panel of teachers and scientists recommends.

Their report, a set of guidelines known as the National Science Standards, is the latest in a series of recommendations for 11 disciplines, including history, mathematics and social studies. Most have been announced; two others, English and economics are still being written.

Scientists and educators have long believed that the schools have failed to teach adequately even the most basic scientific concepts and have not done enough to make science an appealing subject.

"We've managed to turn people off of science by making it some kind of rote learning exercise," said Bruce M. Alberts, chairman of the National Research Council, which coordinated the study, and president of its scientific arm, the National Academy of Sciences. "What we're talking about here would be a revolution in science education."

The guidelines, developed over the last three years teachers, scientists and school administrators, say that fourth-grade students should have a basic understanding of the properties of objects and materials, life cycles of organisms, objects in the sky and the use of science and technology in solving simple problems. By eighth grade, students should be able to model scientific inquiry and understand motions and forces, reproduction and heredity, the Earth's history and the history of science. By 12th grade, their understanding should include chemical reactions, natural resources and the nature of scientific knowledge.

Many of the same themes already appear in science curriculums being developed in about half the states, including New York, New Jersey and Connecticut, with a greater focus on the bigger ideas of science: energy, evolution, stability, change and equilibrium.

"We were doing a darn good job of training highly skilled specialists," said Eugenie C. Scott, executive director of the National Center for Science Education in El Cerrito, Calif. "But there were quite a series of sieves we would put people through to get that highly trained elite. And in the process, we lost most of the American public."

While the dense, 250-page document, released yesterday, offers state and local educators more philosophy than prescription, it calls for specific changes like making science a "core" course that students would take every year, starting in kindergarten, and providing all teachers with science training.

While many science teachers said they welcomed the national standards, some were doubtful that states and local districts would have the resources to implement many of the recommendations. For instance, the standards call for extensive teacher training and "more space and time" for classroom exercises.

"It's not good enough to tell people you have to do this," said Carole Greene, who heads the biology department at the Bronx High School of Science in New York. "You have to give them tools. It's not necessarily even the materials because clever teachers know how to keep things cheap. But the labs are extremely crowded and when you've got 34 kids in a 40-minute class, not everyone is going to have the opportunity to investigate and inquire."